﻿South Korea Just Released Fully Functioning Female Robots
Tech-savvy, community-minded and intensely pragmatic, Koreans might be more eager than
many markets, then, to view artificial intelligence as part of the solution,
not the problem. Instead of worrying about an AI apocalypse, they’re figuring out how robots can
make their lives better, helping to solve a vast range of social troubles from the very small to
the large and looming. Keep watching! Hi! My name is Alex and welcome to Al News
Daily. In this video, we will be looking at South Korea’s latest developments in robotics.
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No Small Talk Please! At Incheon International Airport (ICN),
outside South Korea’s capital Seoul, a team of congenial staff will help you
find your boarding gate or escort you to the nearest lounge. They’re well trained,
well behaved and quadrilingual to boot – but they’re not so good at small talk. That’s because
they’re robots. The robotic airport guides, developed by Korean tech titan LG Electronics,
have been working alongside human employees since the end of July 2017. Standing 1.4m tall,
they move autonomously on a wheelbase, display an LCD information screen and navigate using cameras
and ultrasonic, laser and edge sensors. They can also recognise voice and process language. They’re
not the only robots to be making headlines in South Korea, as the country prepared to host the
upcoming 2018 Winter Olympics from 9-25 February in the north-eastern city of Pyeongchang.
Others include Hankook Mirae Technology’s towering Method-2, proclaimed to be the
world’s first manned bipedal robot, and DRC-HUBO, a humanoid robot with transformer capabilities,
created by the Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology and 2015 winner of the
Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) Robotics Challenge. LG has also
developed another airport robot, a cleaner that uses mapping and obstacle-avoidance technology
to calculate the most efficient pathways and keep the space sparkling.
Cutting-Edge Technology South Korea, along with its
easterly neighbour Japan, has for many years been known for its cutting-edge intelligent designs,
having already deployed robotic teachers, industrial manufacturing workers
and service staff. Together, they make up a futuristic workforce where autonomous devices
are stepping in to fill human roles. “In our view, artificial intelligence,
robots and related solutions are not just new gadgets, but key technologies to support humans,”
said Jae-myoung Hong, senior engineer in LG’s Smart Solutions Division. “In some cases,
robots may perform jobs that are too dangerous or too complicated for regular workers.”
An Ancient Heritage While South Korea is hurtling toward
a brave new world, it’s rooted in a familiar old one, too. It is that ancient heritage,
replete with animals who have their own hopes and dreams, trees with souls and mountains with
spirits, that may have, in some way, helped influence South Korea’s modern technology.
The innovation powerhouse might not even exist today – at least if Korean folklore has anything
to say about it – if it weren’t for one bear who was as persistent as she was optimistic.
This bear, more than 4,300 years ago, was high atop a mountain with a tiger. They both longed
to be human. Taking pity on them, the son of the Lord of Heaven gave them two sacred foods,
garlic cloves and mugwort, and told them to ration the supply and stay out of the sun for 100 days.
Impatient, the tiger quickly quit. The bear, though, made it to the end of the challenge,
transforming into a woman who went on to marry the son of the Lord of Heaven and give birth
to a son of her own. Named Dangun, he took the throne and became the ruler of the land. And so,
the Korean kingdom owed its creation to an animal who achieved very human aspirations.
Korean Shamanist Faith The nation’s foundation myth,
celebrated every 3 October, is just one in a collection of animist legends that form
a cornerstone of the country’s oldest religion: shamanism. Even today, shamanist attitudes remain
“embedded” in the Korean psyche, influencing “business, politics and everyday lives,”
according to Kwang-yeong Shin, professor of sociology at Chung-ang University in Seoul.
In the Korean shamanist faith, many of whose core elements have been incorporated into Buddhism,
it’s not unusual to think that a passing bird could carry the reincarnated soul of your dead
uncle, or even that a meaningful memento or particularly beloved musical instrument
might have sacred spirits of their own. “We can think that any kind of non-human being might
have a spiritual or super power beyond human capacity, whether it is a natural object or
artificial object,” Shin told. All of which makes the idea of other non-humans – such
as robots – adopting human qualities not exactly cause for alarm in South Korea.
“It makes sense that animistic features of shamanism might go well with robots, which are
not living agents but have some characteristics of human beings,” said Dong-kyu Kim, a shamanism
scholar at Sogang University’s Institute for the Study of Religion. In this way, ancient
spirituality may have primed the Korean people to be more culturally and socially open-minded
to autonomous devices than perhaps Westerners. Armed with this accepting attitude, South Korea
became an ideal breeding ground, and consumer market, for advanced robotics innovation.
Wider Acceptance, Greater Innovation In 2016, South Korea sold more than 41,000 robots,
second most on the planet, according to the International Federation of Robotics (IFR).
That’s nearly half as many as China, which is more than 25 times as populous and 95 times
as big. In fact, South Korea has the highest level of industrial robot density in the world.
In the manufacturing industry, there are 631 robot workers for every 10,000 human employees,
reports IFR. And in the automotive industry, 2,145 for every 10,000.
Some Koreans do feel concerned this will result in fewer jobs for themselves, but in the minds
of many, the concern stops there. “Mass media anticipated many Korean people… would lose their
jobs. However, that was it,” Kim said. “Since then, it is rare to hear about worry regarding
robots.” Meanwhile in the US, consider the doomsday scenarios depicted in mainstream cinema,
from The Terminator to The Matrix to I, Robot, and by the apocalyptic discourse of some of
the nation’s tech leaders, like Elon Musk. (According to a recent Pew Research survey,
72% of Americans are in fact very or somewhat worried about the future of automation.)
No Panic So, while some
people may feel anxious that robots will not only steal all their jobs, but also
develop a superior and unstoppable intelligence, stage a coup and, in a Frankenstein-like fate,
destroy the very people who created them, Koreans just aren’t that panicked. Of course,
it’s much more complex than that. Koreans have always recognised a certain necessity, too.
After the Korean War, which ended in 1953, the country’s government set out to pull itself out
of poverty by putting its manufacturing sector front and centre. That precipitated the need to
develop high-tech innovation and a highly skilled workforce – both of which helped make South Korea
the economic success story it is today. Indeed South Korea has ranked as the world’s most
innovative economy for the past four years in a row, according to the Bloomberg Innovation Index,
and the country spent more than any other on research and development in 2014, when measured
by share of GDP, reports the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Tech-savvy, community-minded and intensely pragmatic, Koreans might be more eager than many
markets, then, to view artificial intelligence as part of the solution, not the problem. Instead of
worrying about an AI apocalypse, they’re figuring out how robots can make their lives better,
helping to solve a vast range of social troubles from the very small to the large and looming.
LG, for example, is working to develop more and more types of robots that can optimise both the
home – from autonomous lawnmowers to smart appliances – and beyond, including hotels,
shopping malls, tourist centres and other public spaces. “Our goal is to identify areas where
automated devices can add the most value,” said Hong, who expects some of the company’s robots
to be ready for commercial release within the next one to two years. Future applications of robotics
innovation could also make it possible for South Korea to not only replace a workforce that’s
rapidly aging and retiring, but also care for it. And, perhaps even more urgently, artificial
intelligence could play an increasingly important role in defending the country’s DMZ border with
North Korea, which has already seen the deployment of semi-autonomous sentries like the SGR-A1,
first developed by Samsung. With that, we come to the end of this
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